Monday, December 12, 2011

There is an issue in the discussion of morality having to do with the meaning of moral terms. It came up in a recent comment where the author questioned whether the actions of an altruistic mouse or a cub-killing lion can be called "moral" or "immoral".

This attaches to the question of what moral terms mean.

Luke Meuhlhauser, with whom I have worked a few times, suggests a view called "moral pluralism". He holds that moral terms do not have one meaning - that they have different meanings for different people. With each different set of meanings there is a theory that corresponds to that set. Therefore, there isn't one moral theory that is correct. There are countless moral theories.

This sounds like moral relativism, but it is not. Objectively, these theories do not contradict each other - because the world itself does not contain contradictions. However, people speaking in one language may utter statements that appear as if they contradict the claims made in another theory.

For or example, one person may hold that what is right is that which is commanded by God, and what is right is that which is permitted by God is one moral theory. She uses "right" to literally mean "that which is commanded by God" and "wrong" as "that which God prohibits."

Another may use "right" to mean "that which maximizes utility", and "wrong" to mean "that which does not maximize utility is another theory".

These are two distinct moral theories. Both of them are legitimate. Both describe a way in which a person may choose to use moral terms. Both theories are correct.

However, these theories cannot contradict each other is because, no matter how we choose to use the terms, this will not change what is real. A person can have a theory that says that what is right is that which is commanded by God, but thinking it does not make it the case that there is a God that holds anything to be right.

Another person can have a theory that a right act is the act that maximizes utility. However, we can then ask, "What is literally true of the act that maximizes utility"? Does it follow that people generally have reason to praise such an act? Does it follow that the agent himself has a reason to perform that act? Does it follow that the act has a property of intrinsic goodness? Declaring an act "right" does not change its properties. Nor does it, by itself, give agents a reason to behave differently.

When somebody adopts a moral theory, they do not necessarily adopt a set of beliefs about the world. Adopting a moral theory is to adopt a language - to decide to use moral terms in a particular way. When two people adopt two different moral languages, they will sometimes have trouble communicating. Because those languages are very similar to each other, they may be confused about the nature of their disagreements - mistaking differences in languages as differences in beliefs.

On this account, desirism is one theory among many. I can defend the claim that desirism explains more of the use of moral language than any other theory. It makes sense out of the types of evidence that people usually bring in to defend moral claims. It is a theory in which some moral claims are true. However, it is still just one theory out of a very large set of possible theories. Meaning, it is one language out of a near infinite set of possible languages.

This view suggests that it might be better to abandon moral terms entirely. We should just be rid of them and, instead, simply stick to the propositions themselves and whether they are true or false.

Rather than saying that an act that maximizes utility is right, we can simply stick to the fact that it maximizes utility. Rather than saying that which God forbids is wrong we can simply stick to the claim that God forbids it - which is always false, because there is no God.

Applying this to the comment I referenced earlier, I argued that moral concepts do not apply to the case of a rat freeing a confined rat. Moral terms apply to behavior that we have the capacity to control through social institutions such as praise and condemnation. It makes no sense to say that a person is evil because he happens to have bad genes. It makes as little sense as calling a tornado evil for destroying a school.

However, if we apply Muehlhauser's approach we could have a different answer. Me and the commenter are speaking two different moral languages. On my language, praise and condemnation only apply to behavior that can be (and is being) molded through praise and condemnation.

In a different languages, those terms "moral" could mean, "Behavior we would praise if it were done by a creature with malleable desires." "Immoral" would mean "behavior we would condemn if it were done by a creature with malleable desires". On this account, it does make sense to say that the rat that releases another rat from confinement performed a moral action and the lion that kills the antelope performed an immoral action. However, this still does not imply that either action is praiseworthy or blameworthy - because they were not, in fact, the consequence of malleable desires we have reason to inhibit or promote.

Language is subjective. We cannot give an objective argument to the effect that one definition is correct and another is incorrect. We may, at our discretion, freely agree to alter the definition of our words. However, the ability to freely change the definition of words does not imply a freedom to alter reality. We can agree to use the term "carbon" to refer to atoms that have 8 protons rather than atoms that have 6. However, our decision will not alter the properties of atoms that have 8 protons or of atoms that have 6.

Muehlhauser presents a tempting view - and I have adopted it to some extent. In many cases, rather than fight about the meaning of moral terms, I simply provide the description and its implications and set the moral language aside. For example, instead of saying that something is wrong, I argue that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn it, and then give those reasons. Functionally, this says everything that I mean to say when I say that something is wrong. So, then, why add all of the confusion and complexity of actually using the term "wrong"?

This implies a reduced interest in arguing that desirism is the best moral theory and, instead, simply using the propositions that make up desirism (without the morally laden terms) to make the same claims in a less confusing language. Why put a lot of effort into arguing that desirism is the best moral theory when, instead, you can argue that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn violations of freedom of speech, or having sex with children - or to praise acts of charity or of pursuing education over mindless entertainment.

However, when it comes to entering into public debate on any subject, I do not think it is possible to leave moral terms behind. This, too, is likely to misinterpreted. Leaving moral terms behind may mean, to some, that everything is permissible (with each theory having its own account of what "permissible" means). This is not a legitimate implication. What is legitimate depends on how the term is used and if it makes a claim that is objectively true of that which is being called legitimate.
Furthermore, I hold that people do substantially use moral terms in a way consistent with desirism. Therefore, desirism does allow one to communicate with people on matters of social importance in terms that they understand. Calling something wrong, for example, does, in fact, communicate that it is something that people generally have reason to condemn.

However, it is still a mistake to get caught up in a dispute of definitions that are not, at the same time, disputes over substance.

3 comments:

if i understand you. you are implyimg that the mouse and the lion have desires that are not malleable and humans have desires that are malleable and we had a disagreement becuase we were using the terms "right" and "wrong" instead of more fundemental descriptions. so let me try again without moral terms.

the behavior of the mouse in this instance is malleable, in that it can be trained with cheese (praise) or being sprayed with a hose (condemnation)

when a mouse frees another mouse from confinement there is greater desire fullfillment than when a mouse leaves another mouse in confinement. and the desire to do so or not is a malleable desire (not all mice in the study decided to free the other mouse)

i assert that a lion could be taught in the same way not to commit infantacide. and that the desire to kill young cubs is malleable. and that killing all the young cubs hinders utility.

i assert that the lion's desire to eat a gazelle is not malleable and therefore praise and condemenation cannot be effectively applied.

to put my arguments back in moral terms: the mouse is acting morally when it frees the other mouse. the lion is acting immoraly when it kills the lion cubs and the lion is acting amorally when it eats the gazelle.

Muehlhauser presents a tempting view - and I have adopted it to some extent. In many cases, rather than fight about the meaning of moral terms, I simply provide the description and its implications and set the moral language aside. For example, instead of saying that something is wrong, I argue that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn it, and then give those reasons. Functionally, this says everything that I mean to say when I say that something is wrong. So, then, why add all of the confusion and complexity of actually using the term "wrong"?

Suppose two people were arguing about whether or not we ought to promote racial equality. One person insisted that we "ought" to do so because racial equality was "just", and the other person insisted that we "ought not" to do so, because racial equality was "unjust." Meuhlhauser would say that they were merely arguing about the definition of a word and not anything substantive. He would see their dispute over whether the term "ought" should or should apply to racist behavior as being analogous to a dispute about whether the term "vegetable" or "fruit" should be applied to a watermelon, and disanalogous to a dispute over whether, say, Jesus of Nazareth actually rose physically from the dead.

His proposed solution is like trying to avoid the problem of what exactly it means to say that something is true by saying "instead of asserting that a given proposition is 'true', I instead say that we have many and strong reasons to believe it."

Just as it is absurd to claim that there is a difference between saying that one has a strong reason to believe something and that one has a strong reason to believe that something is true, it is absurd to suggest that the statement "people have many and strong reasons to do x" means something substantially different from "people ought to do x."

And even making this meaningless distinction does not actually solve the problem. Meuhlhauser seems to think that someone who says "people ought to do what God tells them to" and another person who says "people ought to maximize utility" do not necessarily disagree with each other about anything substantive (except possibly about the existence of God). Replacing the term "ought" with "have many and strong reasons to" does not solve this problem, because the replacement is vulnerable to the same objection. Maybe Meuhlhauser would say that we have "many and strong reasons" to promote racial equality, while a racist would assert that we have "many and strong reasons" not to do so. In this case, it would seem that he and the racist do not actually disagree about anything substantive, and only are in disagreement about the linguistic issue of how to define the term "many and strong reasons."

What you said here is very important:

However, it is still a mistake to get caught up in a dispute of definitions that are not, at the same time, disputes over substance.

Meuhlhauser is mistaking a great deal of substantive disputes for linguistic ones, and the false distinction he draws between saying that we "ought" to do X and that we have "many and strong reasons" to do X, and then making the latter claim rather than the former, does not enable us to address substantive issues in a way that we could not before.

'In this case, it would seem that he and the racist do not actually disagree about anything substantive, and only are in disagreement about the linguistic issue of how to define the term "many and strong reasons."'

At this point, it need not even be linguistic. For instance, I could say "I have many and strong reasons to go either direction."

Ought might come back into play when the two agree it means "more and/or stronger reasons," and then set about settling the matter by counting and weighing reasons.

There may still be many linguistic issues as we build our models linguistically. Linguistically, there can be a disagreement on whether ought weights number or strength more in the final equation. However, there can also be a disagreement on the number or the strength of the reasons.

About Me

When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to leave the world better off than it would have been if I had not existed. This started a quest, through 12 years of college and on to today, to try to discover what a "better" world consists of. I have written a book describing that journey that you can find on my website. In this blog, I will keep track of the issues I have confronted since then.